


Breakfast

by DoilySpider



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Slice of Life, just a little lighthearted beholding somehow, post 159, sleepy early morning sappiness, some borderline almost angst but you don't quite get there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-18
Updated: 2020-01-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:28:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22305685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoilySpider/pseuds/DoilySpider
Summary: Martin is trying to get used to not waking up alone. Jon is trying not to intrude.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 16
Kudos: 257





	Breakfast

When first Martin awoke to the empty space beside him, twin panics coursed through his body. The firstborn of these shrieked,  _ Where is he? Was he taken? Is he hurt? What’s happening to him? _ The second, close on its heels, keened low and mournful,  _ I am alone again. I will always end up alone.  _ Both were silenced when Martin dared to open his eyes and he saw Jon.

Jon was sitting in a threadbare red armchair, his legs tucked up to his chest. There were loose pages cradled in his hands, and he read them by the low light that filtered through the ugly tartan curtains; curtains that must have come with the cabin, because Daisy certainly wouldn’t have chosen them either. How serene Jon looked, eyes dancing over the lines, a fragile smile like a secret he was keeping. Martin almost hated to disturb him.

“What are you doing up?” Martin mumbled through a mouthful of sleep.

Jon’s gaze did not break from his reading. “Couldn’t sleep,” he said. “Didn’t want to wake you.”

Yawning, Martin pushed himself up against the headboard, arching his back to stretch out his spine. “At least put a light on. You’ll strain your eyes like that.”

Pages turned with the flick of a thin wrist. “Not really. Your handwriting is plenty big enough.”

It was only then that it occurred to Martin that Jon wasn’t having an early morning statement. Of course he wasn’t, the way he was reading in silent reverence. His contentment in the stillness. “Oh.”

This small, surrendering sound drew Jon’s attention. Finally he looked to Martin with a worried furrow of the brow and folded the pages over. “Should I not have?” he asked. “I’m sorry, you left them out on the table and I thought--”

“No, no, it’s okay.” In futility Martin made a few passes with his fingers to smooth out his bedhead, but it would have to wait for the comb. He opened his mouth. He closed it. He opened it up once more and said, “I thought you hated my poetry.”

The way Jon sank in his seat made Martin wish he hadn’t pointed it out. “I used to,” Jon confessed. “Or, I thought I did.” He glanced down and gingerly reopened the pages with fond regard, ran a finger along the edge of a stanza.

Martin shivered as though feeling the touch on his own spine. “What changed? Because I don’t think I got better.”

“Maybe. But I did.” Jon shifted his weight, unfolded his legs and sat up a bit straighter. He settled the poems down into his lap. “And I learned to read you. And now when I read these, I hear your voice so clearly. And…” He trailed off, shoulders tensing.

“And.”

Jon was making determined eye contact with the floor. “The ones that are less scenic, the ones where I can really feel what you were feeling. It... “ He swallowed. “It’s not the same as reading a statement aloud. I don’t think I could live on it… but it does take the edge off.” He sighed and withdrew in on himself, burying his face in his hands. “I’m sorry. That’s so invasive, isn’t it?”

Lately, Jon had been very good about not Knowing things too often, but he couldn’t always control it. Honestly, Martin didn’t mind overly much. There was still a bit of the Lonely all tangled up with Martin’s brain and the ventricles of his heart, and it made it hard to venture conversation sometimes. So sometimes it was simply easier for Jon to already know, and they could work from there. Martin wondered faintly if that was how Elias and Peter had made it work, when they could make it work, and then he desperately needed to not be thinking about Peter Lukas at all anymore. Jon. He had to look to Jon. His guide, his wayfinder, his beacon.

Martin unspooled himself from bed and tread soft across the hardwood. He used to have very heavy footfalls, he seemed to remember. He tried not to think about the reason for that change. Instead, he gently laid his hands over the hands of his beloved and coaxed him to lower them and look up. When he did, he saw Martin beaming down on him, cast in the glow of dawn light. “You worry too much sometimes, you know?”

“I think I worry a reasonable amount for someone with my experiences,” Jon said, but his face was threatening to crack with a smile.

Martin gathered up Jon’s hands in his, softly, slowly rubbed their scarred backs. He lifted one to his face to lay a kiss upon the knuckles, pleased to hear Jon sigh in return. “Besides, it is the highest compliment to a poet to know his poetry made you feel something.”

“Don’t need a poem for that,” Jon remarked. He turned his hand out of Martin’s grip to caress his cheek.

A blush crowned Martin’s cheekbones from beneath Jon’s dark fingertips. “Come back to bed?” he said, leaning into his touch. “You need rest.”

“I know I do, I just don’t think I can right now.” Jon glanced helplessly down at the pages in his lap, then back to Martin. “Can I finish.”

Martin knew better of course than to push him. It wouldn’t help. Jon couldn’t help when the pain and the trauma dug too deep to give him peace. Couldn’t help it any more than Martin could. The least Martin could do was let him find what solace he could in the silly little words he wrote of him, and this place they shared together. “Fine, you twisted my arm,” Martin said.

He settled down there onto the floor beside Jon and rested his head down on his knee. Jon held the poetry in one hand, resuming his little morning treat. With the other, he reached down to toy with Martin’s messy hair, idly, almost unthinkingly, too absorbed in his reading. Martin felt a warm and pleasant tug at the base of his heart, and he wasn’t sure if it was his own love, if it was Jon’s love sinking down into him. Or maybe it was the feeling of Jon eating up Martin’s adoration with his hungry eyes and taking it for his own, sating himself on it. 

Funny, Martin thought as he settled into a doze there resting against him, how he kept finding ways to take care of Jon even when he wasn’t trying.

**Author's Note:**

> jons can have little a poetry. as a treat!
> 
> I am an angst writer! I have no idea what happened to me!


End file.
